


raise your fists up to the sky

by openended



Series: i don't look for trouble (but trouble looks for me) [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Injury Recovery, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Krem's first morning with the Chargers, and there's a naked elf asleep in the middle of camp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	raise your fists up to the sky

Krem steps out of the tent and straightens, squinting in the morning sun. Light fog rolls through the forest, close to the ground, but the sun’s already burning it away. He’s not quite sure what he’s meant to do - fight, he knows that much, and assumes the Iron Bull will tell him who he’s to be hitting, but as for camp and mornings he’s a bit unsure. He sees Dalish and the dwarf on the other side of the fire poking at what smells like breakfast while Iron Bull grumbles as Stitches takes a look at his eye. 

He walks toward them, and nearly trips over the elf.

The very _naked_ , very _feminine_ elf. 

Krem skirts around her, looking closely enough to determine that she’s alive, just asleep, and then takes great care to avert his eyes.

"You know there’s an elf just lying there," he says after the _good morning_ s. They can’t possibly have _missed_ her.

"Oh yeah, that’s Sparks. She’ll be awake as soon as Rocky puts the bacon on." Iron Bull hisses as Stitches puts something very purple onto the space where his eye used to be. 

He says it so nonchalantly that Krem feels even more awkward asking _why_ there’s a naked elf sleeping in the middle of camp, so he sits on the log near Dalish and assumes an explanation will come. He’s stiff from the fight yesterday, but the sun’s out and the air’s clear and he’s not dead; he stretches his arms out, but the soreness doesn’t bother him as much as it usually does. 

As predicted, Rocky barely has the bacon sizzling in the pan when Sparks wakes up. She sits up and runs her fingers through her bright blonde hair, frowning at the twigs and dried mud. She blinks at Krem, clearly trying to comprehend the new addition to her group, though she makes no move to cover herself. 

"How’s it going," she nods at him, and then looks over at the rest of them. "Anyone know where my pants are?"

Dalish silently tosses her a bag.

"You were supposed to be back two days ago," Iron Bull says.

She tugs a tunic over her head. Krem looks away when she stands up to pull her leggings on.

"You people move around like a herd of drunk halla," she says by way of an excuse. She sits back down and fishes around the bottom of the bag for something small. Triumphant, she tilts her head and carefully slides the curved metal spiral through her right ear. "There’s a Templar camp in the foothills, a group of Crows looking for someone who isn’t any of us, and about four very boring fishing villages. Coast’s clear. Who’s the new guy? What the hell happened to your eye?” She looks around her at the dirt and grass. “And where’s my staff?"

"Krem," Iron Bull says, answering her questions in order. "Got in the way of a Vint’s flail. And over there," he points. 

Satisfied that her staff is where Iron Bull claims it is, Sparks joins the group on the other side of the fire. She looks at Krem, letting her eyes roam over him, and shrugs before she takes the loaded plate Rocky offers her and sits beside Skinner to eat.

Krem has no idea if the shrug is impressed, indifferent, or something else. “That happen often?” he quietly asks Dalish. “Her, in the middle of camp.”

"You get used to it," she says.

* * *

It’s three months before she shifts into a raven front of him and and flies off, and suddenly that first morning makes _so_ much more sense.

* * *

"Kylie," she says one night when they’re both on watch at the same time.

Krem blinks, and turns away from staring at a rock. “What?”

"My name’s Kylie. Not Sparks.”

She killed a bandit the other day by shooting lightning from her fingertips, the nickname’s source is obvious - not like Iron Bull shies away from on-the-nose nicknames, what with _Dalish_ and _Stitches_. He assumed she had a real name, but had assumed that like the others, she wasn’t willing to share it. Nice to be wrong, sometimes. “Cremisius,” he says.

She makes a face not unlike the one he makes when people call him by his full name these days. “You don’t mind if I stick with Krem, do you?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “As long as you don’t make awful puns with it.”

Kylie laughs. “Yeah, I don’t think _Krem Puff_ is going away anytime soon.”

“Quiet out there!” Dalish yells from inside her tent. “People are trying to sleep, you know.”

Krem grimaces, feeling guilty, but Kylie turns and looks over her shoulder at the tents. “Try harder!” she shouts back with a grin.

“Shut up, all of you,” Iron Bull grumbles, voice thick with sleep.

“Sorry, Chief,” Kylie and Dalish say at the same time.

Krem settles against the tree trunk and watches the fire. “How long’ve you been with the Chargers?” he asks quietly. It’s only been half a year for him, though he’s felt more at home in that half a year than he did most of his life in Tevinter.

She shrugs and pops a blueberry in her mouth. “Five years? Six? Feels like forever, really.”

He’s bad at estimating elf ages, but the way she looks at Iron Bull - like he’s the only one she’s ever cared to listen to - makes him think she joined up younger than the rest. He wonders what the story is there, how a fairly young Dalish mage managed to find herself involved with a mercenary group, but doesn’t ask. He’s learned Skinner’s and Rocky’s stories just by listening; Kylie’s will surface eventually.

She nudges his shoulder to get his attention again, and offers him the small basket of blueberries.

* * *

A year and a half goes by before Krem realizes that she doesn’t share her berries with anyone, except him. Not even the Chief.

* * *

Afsaana is a _mess_. They’ve got blood mages and all the crap they conjure up, a thunderstorm (which is admittedly _helping_ Kylie), and they’re down a man since Grim’s out with the Nevarran flu.

They’re not thoroughly screwed yet, but they’re well on their way to it if the blood mage on the corner chanting under his breath is any indication.

Iron Bull shouts something that’s half-lost in a clap of thunder. But Dalish hits the mage with a well-aimed bolt of fire, which Skinner follows up with a handful of knockout powder and a knife to the base of his spine, and they move significantly away from Thoroughly Screwed.

Which lasts all of five minutes.

The storm lets up, just rain now, and a new chanting blood mage appears; this one’s on the roof, angled behind an archway, blocked from the barrage of flaming arrows Stitches sends flying upward. 

Krem dispatches two corrupted spiders with ease, but they were only a distraction. He has precisely half a second to realize that he’s been separated from the group before he’s completely surrounded. He’s good with a sword, but he’s not eight-enemies-at-once good, especially not when three of them have snapping jaws and sharp teeth.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kylie slam her staff into the ground, sending out bolts of white-hot purple lightning, staggering everything near her. She drops her staff and then falls to all fours, back arched. He can’t focus on her, not if he wants to stay alive as long as possible, but the storm rages again and he catches her through flashes of lightning.

Her arms and legs thicken and her clothes split down the seams as she grows bigger. Fur ripples out of her skin and her fingernails lengthen into claws. She roars, even louder than the thunder, and when next he looks - a huge black bear with glowing green eyes is barreling angrily toward him, lips curled back in a snarl.

With a swipe of her giant paw, two of the men fly backward. Their bodies hit the stone street and they lie still, crumpled where they fell. The direwolves turn their attentions to her and with only three enemies focused on him, Krem ducks and weaves, smashes and charges like the Chief taught him.

Stitches gets lucky with a bounced arrow and the blood mage falls before his spell can take root. No replacement appears this time, and the Chargers take down the rest of the mages and warriors, and one of the direwolves.

The bear roars up onto her hind legs and flings the last wolf off of her, its jaws finally releasing her arm, and then the streets are suddenly silent, save for the rain pounding on the stone. She collapses, and where a bear used to be, Kylie lies curled up, naked and bleeding in the rain, unconscious.

“Get her staff,” Iron Bull orders Stitches as he kneels beside her, carefully lifting her into his arms. “Find the book,” he tells Skinner and Rocky, “meet us at the tavern outside town.”

Krem trails after him, keeping watch on their rear in case they missed some, but no one attacks. As he passes, he tries not to look at the spot where Kylie lay, where the rain washes away her blood.

No one even seems to notice them on their way out of the city.

* * *

Half their earnings from the job go toward bribing the silence of an innkeeper just inside the Antivan border.

Thanks to Stitches and a spirit healer, her wounds heal in less than a week; a through her eyebrow, a mess of a bite mark on her left shoulder, and three long lines down her right leg, all shiny pink scars now. 

But it’s another five days before Kylie finally wakes up.

The Chargers swap shifts sitting by her bedside. No one comments that Krem seems to take more than the rest of them.

* * *

For the next seven days, she mostly sleeps. Sleep, alternated with eating and an occasional wobbled trip to a chamber pot.

* * *

Krem hears the tail end of the conversation when he climbs up the stairs with a tray for her for dinner.

“It’s a stupid rule anyway.”

“You sure?” Kylie’s voice, stronger than it has been since she woke up.

“Yeah, more of a guideline. Go for it, kid.”

“Thanks, Boss.”

“No problem. Now get to walking, Rocky’s promised me he’s close to testing a new formula and we want to be long gone from here when he does.”

A quiet laugh, and then a cough. “Yes, sir.”

Iron Bull ducks a little and turns sideways, exiting her room. He gives Krem a look that Krem doesn’t quite understand, and then nods, leaving him in silence.

“How’re you feeling?” Krem asks, setting the tray in front of her. She’s awake and alert now, finally. He’s missed her voice.

“Starving,” she takes a raspberry from the bowl and smiles as she chews it. “Apparently turning into a bear knocks me out more than turning into a bird.” Fighting off three furious direwolves didn’t help, Krem’s sure.

He sits in the chair beside her bed and draws one leg to his chest. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

She spears a roasted potato and shakes her head. “Neither did I.”

He lets her eat in silence. Firelight reflects warmly off her dark skin, making it glow in the fading light; but the shadows under her eyes and the way she carefully focuses on her food give away that she’s lost a lot of weight, that she’s weaker than she used to be. “Thanks,” he says when she’s finished and set the tray aside. “For turning into a bear.”

Kylie smiles, a lopsided grin that makes something inside Krem melt a little. “You’re welcome,” she says. “But I wouldn’t count on it,” she teases him, “I’m not sure I could do it again.”

“Already got that lecture from the Chief,” he tells her, returning her smile.

She leans over and kisses his cheek, just a quick press of her lips against his skin. “Thanks for staying alive,” she whispers.

* * *

It’s a handful of cheek kisses over the next two months before Krem realizes.

The something inside of him that melts whenever she smiles starts to grow. He blushes when she talks to him, glad that they’re usually in a dim tavern or outside at night and she doesn’t seem to notice. 

* * *

She’s flinging lightning as fast as she can alongside Dalish and her fire, stunning and panicking the spiders so he and Rocky and Grim can clear them out before the Chief and Skinner and Stitches can catch up to them with the giant in pursuit.

“This is _ridiculous_ ,” she says, far too calm for the situation. She whacks a spider with her staff and then zaps it dead with a touch of her fingertip.

But her laughter’s contagious and soon they’re all keeping score, taunting each other. Dalish is in the lead as they break out of the cave into sunlight, and when the whole affair with the giant is over, Dalish doesn’t pay for drinks for a full month.

As the Chief’s stories about the giant grow more and more improbable - Skinner and Stitches don’t seem too inclined to correct him - Krem watches Kylie at the other table, playing Wicked Grace with Rocky and Dalish. She’s losing pretty badly, but doesn’t seem to mind.

She looks up from her cards and smiles softly at him. She folds on the next hand, drains her mug of water, and stands up, calls it a night. Nobody questions it or gives her grief for leaving early, merely waves or says goodnight; the job in Rivain took more out of her than any of them first thought, and it’ll be a while longer before she can fight all day and drink all night like she used to.

Krem follows her outside, walking her to the room she’s sharing with Skinner and Dalish. She turns to him, ready to say something, but he catches her around her waist, bows his head and kisses her.

She squeaks in surprise, and then kisses him back, lifting up on her toes as she cups her hands around his cheeks. 

He deepens the kiss, gently sucking her bottom lip before slipping his tongue against hers. She wobbles a bit and he rests his hands on her hips and tugs her a little closer, steadying her against him.

Kylie breaks the kiss, rests her heels on the ground again, and leans her head on his shoulder. He presses his lips against her temple and runs his fingers through her hair, glowing bright in the light of the full moon. Her arms loop around his neck and she sighs, smiling. Krem settles his arms around her waist and holds her close.

After a while, she lifts her head and brushes her thumb across his lips. “Goodnight, Krem,” she whispers.

He loosens his arms, letting her slip out of his embrace. “Goodnight, Kylie.”

She bites her lip, smiling shyly, and then turns and walks up the steps to her room.

* * *

When he returns to the tavern, Rocky and Dalish are in a heated argument about a particularly obscure rule, Grim’s passed out and leaning against Skinner, who looks like she’s about to stab one of her hidden knives into his thigh, and Stitches is off in a dark corner with one of the serving girls.

The Chief smiles knowingly at Krem, and buys him a drink.


End file.
